


Five Ways Danielle Jackson Met The Others If There Was No Stargate Program

by ivorygates



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: 5 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Daniverse, Gen, Girl!Daniel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-28
Updated: 2007-02-28
Packaged: 2017-11-25 16:53:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/641068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What the title says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Ways Danielle Jackson Met The Others If There Was No Stargate Program

1\. Incense and Peppermints (Sam)

In 1978, fourteen-year-old Samantha Carter's family took a rare and unlikely vacation to Mexico. Her dad was stationed in San Diego, so it was really just a short drive over the border. Since Sam's dad never did anything by halves, he just kept driving south.

They were trying to make a decent-sized town by the time it got dark, so Jacob Carter took a short cut along a one-lane dirt road through what Sam would have called 'jungle' if she'd seen it on television. It was supposed to take them back to the main road, and it probably would have if they hadn't gotten a flat tire. At fourteen, Sam was smart enough to stay out of the way and let her mother soothe her father's ruffled feathers. The most important part of the task was keeping ten-year-old Mark out of the way and _quiet._ He never knew when to shut up and stop asking questions that didn't have any answers. And he could never tell when Dad was on the edge of losing his temper.  
  
So she walked a few yards down the road with him while Dad started changing the tire and Mom hovered. And Mark chattered about guerillas and drug cartels and _banditos,_ and even though Sam could tell there was a good four hours of light left, she also knew they were lost, and she wished he would just _shut up_. She only turned her back on him for a moment, and when she turned around, he was gone.

She didn't cry out. He wasn't anywhere in sight, but their parents hadn't noticed yet. There was only one place the _jungle_ was thin enough that he could have walked off the road without her noticing. She followed.

It was dark under the trees, but there was a trail. She didn't think she'd get lost -- because she could still see the sun -- but when she looked around a few minutes later, the trail behind her was gone and she couldn't see the road any more. She knew which way to go, but she couldn't get there. And she wouldn't leave without Mark. Damn him.

She didn't find him. He found her. Half an hour later he came walking back toward her with a boy a little older than he was. The other boy was leading him by the hand, and every time Mark tried to pull away, the other boy smacked him.

"You must be Sam," the other boy said, and Sam realized the boy was actually a girl. "I'm Dani. Mark said your parents are still alive?"

That was a funny way of putting it, Sam thought even at the time. "Our car has a flat tire," she said. She didn't want to admit she'd been frightened, but she had been. "It's back there." She gestured toward the road. She knew where it was -- she just couldn't _get_ there.

Dani handed Sam a canteen, then led both of them back in the right direction. "You shouldn't wander around the jungle by yourself. It's dangerous."

" _You_ are," Sam said. _By yourself._

"I'm here with my grandfather," Dani said. Sam wondered why she thought Dani was lying.

When they got near to the edge of the road, Sam could hear their parents calling for them. Mark started to hang back, and Dani simply smacked him again. While Sam had to admire the result, she didn't really care much for the method. She reached out and took her brother's hand, and for once Mark didn't pull away and mutter about 'girl cooties.'

"Go on," Dani said. "You can make it from here. They'll be so glad to have you back that they won't yell much, either."

"But shouldn't you--?" Sam began. _Come with us? Explain where the hell we were?_

"Go on," Dani said again. And because Mom and Dad sounded so scared, Sam went.

#

Later -- in the back seat of the car, on the main road, everything in order again -- Sam asked Mark for the full details. "Did you meet Dani's grandfather?"

Mark squirmed in his seat, slouching lower. "I saw her camp. But there wasn't anyone there but her."

#

2\. Moon Over Bourbon Street (Jack)

In 1995 she was a shovelbum working on a project in New Orleans. Berkeley had bounced her with extreme prejudice that spring, and a woman had to eat. The university team spending the summer excavating the old plantation before the housing development went in didn't care a rat's ass what she thought about Ancient Egypt. They just wanted to know she could set up a trench and catalogue what she took out of it properly. And would work for a pittance. All three of those things were true. She was selling off everything she owned for a ticket back to Egypt and some seed money, but that wouldn't come in for a while.

On weekends, everybody usually went into town and partied. They drew lots over who stayed with the site, and she usually sold off her weekends in the Big Easy for cash, but this time she'd decided to go.

She ditched the others early. They wanted to party. She was pretty sure she just wanted to drink. She had an address and somebody's spare key in her backpack, so she had a place to sleep eventually. Everyone warned her to be careful. She really didn't think New Orleans could be a rougher city after dark than Cairo, or Belmopan, or Amsterdam. She wasn't interested in paying tourist prices for tourist drinks. She ended up in a little bar a few streets off the main drag. Some place dark and quiet, full of smoke and jazz. And she knew the liquor laws were liberal here, but even so, she was surprised that the bartender was still willing to serve the man at the bar. He wasn't noisy. But he was about as drunk as she'd ever seen anyone who wasn't falling down.

She didn't know why she kept watching him. But she was glad she had when he got to his feet, tossed some bills on the bar, and dug in his pocket for keys. She put enough money on the table to cover her last round and followed him.

"You don't want to drive," she said, reaching him just as he reached his car. She'd been a decent pickpocket as a child; she plucked the keys from his hand and stepped back out of reach.

She'd never have tried it if he didn't have to hold onto the car to keep himself upright. But she'd gotten good at judging risk.

"You're wrong." He didn't sound as drunk as he had to be.

"Easier ways to kill yourself. Get in."

That made him smile, and she wished it hadn't. But he walked around to the passenger side, and she unlocked the car. There was a receipt on the dash from a local fleabag strip motel, and a courtesy map, so that was where she took him. The motel receipt said his name was 'Jack O'Neill.'

And when she got him there she followed him inside, because he'd left the door to the unit open, and she still had his car-keys. He was lying on one of the beds, and he looked like he was asleep.

There was a gun sitting on the nightstand. She shut the door behind her and took a step toward it.

"You provide taxi service to all the drunks in New Orleans?" he asked, not opening his eyes.

"No."

"Why me?"

"I have no idea."

"Gonna steal my wallet?"

That made her laugh a little. "Hardly."

"Fine."

And then he really did seem to be asleep.

And she could either go up to the office (but it was probably closed by this hour) and see if there was a taxi or a bus or something to take her back into the city, or stay here until morning (bad idea.) Either way, it wouldn't hurt to think the matter over for a few minutes.

When she was sure he was really asleep, she reached for the gun again. She knew about guns. It was easy enough to pop the magazine and empty it, and jack the slide to eject the one in the chamber. She didn’t know why she did. She just did. She dropped the bullets into her pocket. They were heavy. Then she set the gun back on the nightstand, and picked up her backpack. Might as well walk back if there wasn't any other way. It couldn't be more than ten miles.

The office was closed, and the pay-phone on the wall outside it didn't work. She didn't really have the money for a taxi anyway. On the walk back to town, she threw the bullets into the grass along the side of the road, one by one.

#

3\. The Ballad of Thunder Road (Cam)

The exact center of Nowhere Texas was probably the third worst possible place on the planet for an automotive breakdown. Mexico or Central America would be worse (the badness of it increasing in direct proportion to the distance from the U.S. Border), and the Middle East (pick a place) would pretty much suck. But she was on a two-lane back road in the first place because she couldn't get her junker up to the speed limit. And all there was in pretty much every direction was _nothing_ but West Texas desert. And her entire assets on Earth consisted of two hundred fifty dollars cash, a duffel of clothes, a suitcase of books, and a car. Which had decided to stop running.

Of course, it seemed to have _caught on fire_ first. At least she'd gotten it onto the shoulder. She opened the driver's side door and the passenger side door and let West Texas blow through the car. _This is a perfectly fucking delightful start to 1996._ If she couldn't get back to Chicago, she couldn't shoot Simon and ask David to find her a job. She'd have done it by phone, except for having been evicted from her apartment. And the fact that it would be a little hard to shoot Simon over the phone.

After half an hour, the car had stopped smoking, but it didn't do anything more than go 'click' when she turned the key. She figured her options were either stay here and _die,_ or dig the map out of the glove compartment and figure out how many miles it was to Civilization and start walking.

She was scrabbling through the glove compartment -- no, a map of Nevada wasn't going to be a lot of use right now, and neither was one of New Jersey -- when she heard the sound of an engine. Someone coming. She hadn't seen another car on this road all day, and she wasn't sure even now she wanted to flag someone down for help. What did you have in Texas? _Texans._ She still hadn't made up her mind when she got out of the car to look.

It was a big black box-van, and the driver was stopping. _Great, there's probably only one serial killer in Texas, and he's found me._

The driver leaned out the window and looked down at her car. Blue-eyed and All-American; she distrusted him immediately. "Looks like you've got a little car trouble there," he said.

"Oh my god," she said mockingly, feigning shock. "I thought this was the scenic overlook." _Oh for god's sake, Danielle, do not piss off the nice Samaritan-slash-serial killer..._

But all he did was smile. "I guess it _is_ a little warm out here this time of day if you aren't used to it. Hop in. I'll run you up to Steve's. He'll come out and take a look."

"Is there some reason you don't want to do it yourself?" she snapped.

"I might have a little problem with that," he said easily, and the smile didn't waver, but he raised his eyebrows just a bit, and she'd taken a second look at the van and seen the handicapped plates.

"Sorry. I'm--" _Yes, it's National Make Fun of the Handicapped Week and you've been elected Grand Marshal._ "I didn't--"

"Couldn't know," he said. "Cam Mitchell."

"Dani," she said. "Jackson."

On the way to Steve's she found out he was here visiting his cousin and her husband with his parents, that his cousin (Lorena) was expecting her first child and taught ESL at a local school, that Lorena's husband was a geologist, which apparently (in Texas) meant he dug wells for people. Water-wells, Cam explained, not oil wells.

"What about you?"

"I'm going to Chicago." It was a safe enough answer.

"Friends there?"

"Enemies, mostly."

#

'Steve's' was a tiny gas-station fifteen miles up the road, but it had a service bay. Everyone there knew Cam, but by then she'd gotten the idea that Cam didn't really believe in the idea of strangers. She rode back out to her car with Steve, and he looked under the hood and shook his head and said "hope you've got insurance, little lady," and she'd looked over his shoulder at the interior of the engine (meaningless to her, but she was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to look that charred) and said, "I can pay for the tow to get it off the road. Or we can just shoot it here."

And Steve shook his head again and said something about 'nice vintage Camaro' (which was a polite way of saying 'twenty year old junker') and said they could probably do something with her and hooked up the tow-bar and drove back to the station and Cam was still sitting there in his van.

She wanted to ask him what the hell he was still doing here, but she didn't know him well enough. And he and Steve had a nice talk about something while she popped the Camaro trunk and got out her things. She hefted the suitcase. Too heavy. Too bad. She went over to the van.

"Know anybody who wants some books?" she asked.

Cam cocked his head. "What kind of books?"

"Um... mostly archaeology. A few linguistic. Um, reference texts. Dictionaries. Maybe there's a college around here somewhere." She doubted it.

"Why would you be getting rid of all that?"

"Too heavy to carry. No car." She shrugged the duffel higher onto her shoulder. She'd better sign over the title before she went. And leave the keys.

Apparently this was something that required serious thought on Cameron Mitchell's part. "Well, see, I'm not much of a reader. But tell you what. Why'n't you come on home with me tonight? Lorena's just about going out of her mind -- doctor's got her on bed-rest -- and we'll call my uncle about those books. Momma always cooks too much anyway, and there's plenty of room, and-- Do you know anything about cows?"

Cows? She'd started to wonder, well, if they really ought to be letting him out alone. She thought it had probably been a pretty bad car-crash. Somebody'd done a good job, but you could still see the traces of scars on his face in a good light. And, well, _head trauma_. "They're bigger than goats."

That smile again. "Good. Good. Then you can talk to Cousin Travis about his herd. He's got, oh, hundred-sixty head or so. Nothing much."

It was weak-willed and spineless of her to agree, but she did. And for some reason, by the end of the evening, she'd agreed to a number of other things as well. Maybe it was the shock of finding out that the uncle Cam wanted to call about her books was Professor Alvin DeSaussure of UT Austin. Unfortunately, Professor DeSaussure knew exactly who she was, too, because Cam handed the phone over to her and she got to explain exactly just what the _hell_ Dr. Danielle Jackson was doing at his third cousin's house and how she'd met his nephew. After that, agreeing to teach Cousin Lorena's ESL classes until she could come back and do it herself seemed almost reasonable. At least it got her out of shooting Simon.

#

The whole family was at the hospital with Lorena the day Dani got home from the school (not home, but she thought of it that way, even though it was only temporary) and found a message from Dr. DeSaussure on the answering machine. But it was for her, anyway, and she called him back. David had been calling every one he could think of in the last month -- ever since she disappeared -- trying to find her, because a woman named Catherine Langford had been trying to find her. Catherine Langford wanted to offer Dani a job.

"Did you tell him where I was?" Dani asked. _Him. Her. Them. Whoever wants to know._

"Oh, hell, no, honey, I wouldn't do something like that." Dr. DeSaussure answered. He liked her. She thought he was crazy. Cam's said all his relatives were crazy.

"Don't," she said. "I don't want the job." She was sure the woman would find someone else. And Cam had asked if she'd go back to South Carolina with him when he went.

She thought she would.  


#

4\. In The Year 2525 (Teal'c)

In 1997 she was in the Yucatan with the Kleinhouse Expedition. Not quite her field, but she had the languages and the background, and there was that old saying about 'discredited lunatics can't be choosers.' (If there wasn't a saying like that, they really ought to coin one, just for her.) She'd rather be in the field than in a classroom, anyway, though if she had _any sense at all_ , she'd admit it was time to either pack it in, _lie_ , and say she'd been wrong all these years (she wasn't, she hadn't been, she knew it, she just couldn't prove it) and try to grovel her way back into Academia's good graces (David would help as much as he could, she knew that), or else _really_ pack it in and look for something in the private sector. She'd make up her mind when the dig was over. So she'd thought.

She'd been the one making the run to town for supplies; she usually was (best not only at the local languages, but at the local customs.) When she got back to the site, it was completely deserted. Everyone was gone. Except for the Kleinhouses, who were inside the Temple of the Inscriptions, in an inner chamber, dead next to an Egyptian sarcophagus that had no right to be in a Mayan temple at all. There was nothing she could do for the Kleinhouses, and she knew the authorities would confiscate the sarcophagus -- and probably jail her -- the moment she reported the murders, so there was no harm in taking a closer look at the impossible sarcophagus before she did.

It was the last thing she knew until she found herself looking up at a man who was looking down at her.

He was dark-skinned and she was groggy, so at first she thought he was one of the locals come back to look for her, and she spoke to him in Spanish. He answered in a language she'd never heard, and hauled her out of the sarcophagus. By the time he'd dragged her out of the Temple of the Inscriptions, she'd realized several things.

One, for some reason she'd been lying on her back in the sarcophagus. Two, the man was wearing bizarre silver armor -- and a cape. Three, he had a gold metal raised design in the middle of his forehead. Four, somebody had clear-cut the entire dig-site and the entire camp (even the parts that had been left when she'd arrived) was gone. Five, apparently whoever'd done it had done it in order to set up some kind of RenFaire, because the area around the temple was filled with gaudy pavilions.

By the time they reached the ground, she'd tried every language she knew on the weird guy, mostly in an attempt to keep him from _breaking her arm_. For some reason, he finally decided to answer her English.

"I am Teal'c. First Prime to my lord Apophis, your god."

Unfortunately, he didn't have any interest in answering any of her other questions. That was too bad, because when -- five minutes later -- she was brought before Apophis and told him he wasn't her god, Danielle Jackson permanently lost the opportunity to ever ask questions again.

#

 

5\. Pride of Man (Janet)

It was 1998. She was in Egypt, teaching at the University of Alexandria, when it happened. She was lucky. If she'd been in Cairo, she would have been dead instantly. She thought -- everyone did -- that it was The War (the big one, the last one), but apparently it wasn't. The radio and television worked long enough for her to hear reports of Cairo and Giza being hit. The Aswan Dam. The Suez Canal. She'd grabbed everything she could on the first wave of panic -- stolen a Jeep -- and headed into the desert.

Nobody else much was going that way.

She went as far as her gas would take her and then started walking. She had water, a compass, a gun, and a strong desire to stay alive. By then she'd seen things in the sky that couldn't be real.

She didn't want anything to do with the convoy until she saw the symbol on the side of the trucks. _Medeciens Sans Frontieres'_ logo was a modernist scrawl that couldn't be mistaken for any religious symbol whatever. The trucks held a field hospital. It was heading back to civilization -- or it had been when Civilization was still there.

"Dr. Danielle Jackson," she said. "University of Alexandria. Uh, formerly."

The woman who took her hand was a few inches shorter than she was. Brown-eyed, hair bleached bronze by the desert sun. "Dr. Janet Frasier," she answered. She looked over her shoulder at the truck. "We could use a good virologist, but..."

"Sorry," Dani said. "Archaeology. But if you want somebody to talk to your patients, I speak most of the local languages."

Dr. Frasier smiled. "Welcome aboard, Dr. Jackson."

#

They had a short-wave radio, but nothing was broadcasting on any frequency they could pick up. She told them what she'd heard in Alexandria before she left. That had been six days ago. In these parts, it only takes six days to create a world. It shouldn't take more to destroy it. Apparently it hadn't.

A month later they weren't any closer to knowing _who, why, how,_ but they were running a makeshift refugee camp centered around a deep-desert oasis that Dani found for them. She was helping hundreds of people talk to each other. Some of them spoke languages she'd never heard before. If not for Janet and Charles and their nurses (they said Dani was one of their nurses; safer for everyone), everyone would have been dead by now -- the ones that didn't arrive sick, dehydrated, injured, or dying of radiation sickness, usually managed to get that way soon (except for the radiation sickness.) Theft had accounted for all of their drugs and most of their instruments. They could have driven out of here -- if they hadn't drained the gas tanks to run the portable generators and if somebody hadn't slashed the tires. Hunting parties had been bringing food back to the camp (so far.) And so far it had been in everyone's interests to keep the doctors alive.

By a month in, Dani knew who was going to die and who wasn't. It wasn't starvation and it wasn't plague and it wasn't even _crazy people with guns_ (really) that killed you. It was giving up. Something broke inside and you lay down and died. Charlie Warner was getting closer to that every day, but Dani thought Janet would live if she possibly could. She wanted to talk Janet into making a break for it with her. She thought the two of them could make it to the Nile. Follow it to the sea. Then ... somewhere. They couldn't stay here. They were running out of everything. Including time.

She knew Janet wouldn't leave her patients.

Two months after Cairo was destroyed, it didn't matter any more. They were awakened just before dawn one morning by the sound of ... something ... flying low and fast over the desert, here and gone too fast to see. People were thinking -- hoping -- it was rescue -- _aid_ \-- at last. Dani made one more attempt to get Janet to leave. Now.

And neither of them thought that relief aid was coming, and Janet wouldn't leave, and Dani stayed.

An hour later the flying things were back. They came out of the rising sun, and they were golden and beautiful, and like nothing on Earth. Janet took her hand, and they waited for the first bombs to fall.  


#

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, the part titles are all song titles. Even though that exposes my hideously eclectic taste in music. "Thunder Road", BTW, refers to the Charlie Daniels song, not the Bruce Springsteen song, although I suppose it could go either way.
> 
> "Thunder Road" is also (a) the one of these that is struggling to become a novel and (b) the place, really, where the whole Clan Mitchell thing started.
> 
> I wrote this at the same time the original prompt was posted in the LJ Five Things comm, but I can't for the life of me remember when that was.
> 
> Dani and Janet together are love.


End file.
